Film: Ai Weiwei – The Fake Case

Ai WeiWei – The Fake Case trailer. Video: rosforth via YouTube.

Ai Weiwei – The Fake Case is a new documentary produced and directed by Danish filmmaker Andreas Johnsen. Chronicling Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s life from 2009-2012, it follows his release from solitary confinement and subsequent placement under house arrest in 2011.

In an interview with the film’s director, Guernica explained: “Johnsen captures Ai’s huge personality in beautifully mundane shots. Ai sitting on a couch joking around with a friend, or with his little boy in the swimming pool. Or, in a scene that is mostly very grainy and dark, standing in the kitchen with his girlfriend, who says that she’s experiencing a kind of paralysis of her own being while raising a baby. These moments show how painful the circumstances under which Ai is living are without bringing in the rhetoric of rights and free expression and governmental oppression.”

Ever busy, Ai Weiwei also announced plans earlier this month to hold an exhibition of new work in Alcatraz next September.